THE NETHERLANDS
company, who employed some of the brothers until 1993 when differences of opinion concerning the future strategy ended the cooperation. Over the next five years, the company exchanged owners on various occasions and experienced several bankruptcies before it was acquired in 1998 by Hugh Owens from Evesham in the UK. He renamed it Oakfield. Owens was a pioneering mushroom grower with a clear vision in England and owned a trading company. For the first 10 years of his ownership, the mushrooms were exported to the UK. However, a combination of Owens starting to wind down his operations, devaluation of the pound and rising popularity of locally produced food, motivated Oakfield to start its own sales activities with a focus on the Netherlands, Belgium and France. In 2017, the owner sold the company to the existing manage- ment team at Oakfield, which brought the com-
pany partially back into the hands of the third generation of the Pleunis family.
Oakfield Champignons in 2020 Since 2017, Oakfield Champignons has been owned by brothers Arthur and Erik Pleunis and Maurice Koppen. Arthur is responsible for growing activities, Erik for finance and IT and Maurice for sales, marketing, production and staff. As a trading company they speak the lan- guage of the international trading business and as mushroom growers have experience and know- ledge of growing high-quality mushrooms. And they learned a lot from England according to Maurice. The combination of three owners in the management teams unites different qualities and enhances synergy at the company. One of the advantages offered by Oakfield is the availability of an extensive range of standard white and brown mushrooms and four other varieties. The 80 tons of mushrooms produced per week are harvested fresh daily and a small part is packed. The company largely arranges logistics in its own fleet of vehicles. The majority of sales at the moment are to the retail market in the Netherlands and France. In the future, the company's ambition is conti- nued growth in terms of production and sales, while keeping the supply chain between producer and consumer as short as possible. This benefits the sustainability, traceability and shelf life of the mushrooms.
Growing room four rows of shelving, four high, building three, brown mushrooms.
White mushrooms On average, four growing rooms for white mushrooms are filled each week on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays. A 4.5 week cropping cycle is used, harvesting two flushes. The phase III compost is supplied by CNC and about 90 kg of compost is filled per m2. The rollers on the head filler compress the compost to 21 cm thick. Unperforated film is placed under the compost for good moisture management in the second flush. The casing soil is supplied by CNC, type Dutch New, and Euroveen Carbo 9.5. Little CAC is applied at filling, and they aim to distribute the casing quite coarsely to maintain an open struc- ture on the surface. This gives the advantage of creating better spread during pinhead formation for the first flush, and the casing absorbs water mores easily after the first flush. After filling, water is sprayed on four days at a rate of between 18 and 30 l/m2 application of 24 l/m2
, with an average . Over the past year, there Oyster mushrooms first flush. 24 MUSHROOM BUSINESS
have been quite some fluctuations in the moisture content of the compost, so the volume of water sprayed is adjusted accordingly. The ideal scenario is compost with a moisture content of about 61- 62%. If the compost is wetter it is usu- ally not as well colonised by spawn. However, if
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